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When gasoline sold at record prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, "I think it's time to say to these people, 'Stop ripping off the American people.'" When the average price of regular gas was close to $4 a gallon, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for Congress to look into breaking up giant oil companies. The claim was that "Wall Street greed (was) fueling high gas prices."

On Monday, President Obama will unveil his proposed federal budget for 2016. Voters should be warned that virtually all the numbers reported in news coverage of the federal budget will be misleading at best.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister during World War II. Churchill took up painting as a hobby in 1915, after the Gallipoli debacle, where 46,000 allied lives were lost over nine months of the campaign. He went on to paint more than 500 paintings during his lifetime. As wartime prime minister, he took a break from painting, focusing instead on the task at hand - winning the war, no matter the cost.

Enthusiastic, entertaining, energized and eminent, President Obama's demeanor and delivery at the State of the Union belied his political reality. Unbowed, unbroken and possibly unaffected by the recent midterm Republican wave, Obama displayed his great skill by delivering an emotional teleprompter-driven speech that was a throwback to his first election. Varying tempo, pitch, passion and inflection, his speech was more a theatrical performance than a delivery of a prewritten, pre-released text.

Our 18-year-old granddaughter is living with us again as she goes to school, and I love having her. It reminds me of the time she was a baby living with us, and she was the love of my life - besides Molly, of course - and I took her everywhere. I packed her on my back as I covered meetings, we visited Disneyland every week, I decked her out in Disney clothes, we rode every mall merry-go-round in Southern California, we watched some of the most God-awful movies together - the adventures of Lava Boy being the worst - we enjoyed our evening walks ...

My first week of legislative "work" is complete, and it has been a whirlwind. It is hard to imagine how any person can meet so many people and deal with so many issues so quickly. Luckily, I have a very good mentor in former Representative Doug Holt who is helping me wade through the distractions.

Last week's column focused on the ways liberals use blacks in pursuit of their leftist agenda, plus their demeaning attitudes toward black people. Most demeaning are their double standards. It was recently reported that Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House majority whip, spoke at a 2002 gathering hosted by white supremacist leaders when he was a Louisiana state representative. Some are calling on Scalise to step down or for House Speaker John Boehner to fire him. There's no claim that Scalise made racist statements.

As members of the 114th Congress were sworn into office on Tuesday, their party affiliations described what happened last November: 246 of the 435 representatives and 54 of the 100 senators are Republican.

As we enter 2015, the politics of the president's health care law are little changed from last year or the year before, or any year since it was passed. The details change with the calendar, but year after year, the law remains a major drag on President Obama's popularity and legacy.

New Year's is the almost-perfect holiday (Christmas takes the blue ribbon). It's a combination of reflecting, celebrating or possibly just being glad of getting rid of the old year - while at the same time looking forward to the potential and possibilities of the year to come. It's the bridge between the past and present, where what has been done is over - but the future still looks bright, if a bit hazy.

I had just returned from the local toxic waste site where I had disposed of my holiday fruit cakes and was busy cramming my Christmas tree down the garbage disposal (don't ask), when I heard a knock at the door. I figured it was the Environmental Protection Agency coming to talk to me about polluting the toxic waste site with fruit cakes.

I'll never forget Lester Maddox, 75th governor of Georgia, presiding in that capacity from 1967-1971. 'Twould be presumptuous to speak for everyone else, but I can't help but think that anyone who actually met the man at more than a superficial political meet-and-greet would agree.

I've had enough shocks and scares to script an entire lifetime's worth of nightmares. Once, while walking in the woods, I stumbled upon a coiled snake, just staring at me and daring me to come closer. Another time, I slipped off a log and fell into a creek on an icy February afternoon. Then, there was that one Easter night when a drunk driver slammed into the family Ford Galaxy, right as we were turning into our driveway. Stepping on rattlesnakes, falling in a freezing creek, and being rammed by another car are themes worthy of the worst ...

The first news report on what turned out to be the assault on the Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden was hiding apparently was a tweet from a guy complaining about all the helicopter noise late at night.

One can only imagine the joy in Munchkin Land when Dorothy's house dropped out of the sky and killed the Wicked Witch of the East. No longer did the innocent little people in Hollywood's magnificent 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz" have to live in dread of the evil one. "Ding dong, the witch is dead!" they sang as they danced with glee.

Osama bin Laden is deader than a doornail and sleeping with the fish. May he rot in Hell and may those who danced and burned American flags after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed more than 3,000 innocent people end up there with him, minus their virgins. Applause to President Barack Obama, who changed a lot of opinions about his personality and his leadership abilities. It was on his orders that a group of Navy Seals stormed into a compound outside Islamabad, the capital city of a joke called Pakistan, and took out bin Laden and ...

"Every society produces its own cultural conceits," Jack Weatherford wrote in "The Secret History of the Mongol Queens," "a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrives in the face of all contrary evidence. The Mongols believed that they could not be completely defeated."

Last week the White House released a long-form official Hawaiian birth certificate purporting to lay to rest ongoing controversy regarding Barack Hussein Obama II's qualification by birth to fill the office of president of The United States of America. At the heart of the matter has been rampant speculation that the conditions of the birth of the 44th president did not satisfy requirements set forth in the supreme law of the land, The Constitution of The United States of America.